Not Your Mother's CPR: Lee's Summit North High School Partners with Lee's Summit Medical Center to Teach the Community Important Life Saving Skills on Feb. 6

Just like the music cassette tapes that people in the 1970s listened to, enjoying songs like the Bee Gees’ hit, “Stayin’ Alive,” the decades have changed many things—including the way that CPR is taught. And patrons of Tuesday night’s Park Hills vs. Lee’s Summit North High School basketball game will see how easy hands-only CPR is to perform—to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive.”

Lee’s Summit Medical Center and Lee’s Summit Fire Department will be onsite during Tuesday’s game to help educate the community of this life saving skill. Dance teams, cheerleaders, the athletic director and even Lee’s Summit North’s Bronco mascot will assist in providing step-by-step instructions during Tuesday’s halftime, showing people how to press down hard and fast in the center of someone’s chest to the beat of the disco song, which just about matches the optimum CPR rhythm of 100 chest compressions per minute.

The American Heart Association (AHA) and other organizations, including the American Red Cross, are promoting instruction in an easier, hands-only version of CPR that drops the difficult mouth-to-mouth maneuver that was long a part of teaching the life-saving technique.

“CPR has changed,” says Matt Sogard, FACHE, Lee’s Summit Medical Center chief executive officer. “This is a powerful community partnership, to be able to engage people in a life-saving exercise, but also in a fun, memorable way.”

“This is a great opportunity to teach the basics of the updated CPR technique to a large audience,” says Dr. Jeff Meisenheimer, Ed.D., principal of Lee’s Summit North High School. “Students get the opportunity to be trained to be possible lifesavers. I’m excited about this event coming to our school and grateful we can partner with Lee’s Summit Medical Center and the Lee’s Summit Fire Department.”

“The members of the Lee’s Summit Fire Department have seen many lives saved in Lee’s Summit because trained bystanders were able to perform CPR when sudden cardiac arrest occurred,” says Dan Manley, assistant fire chief-training, Lee’s Summit Fire Department. “We encourage everyone in our community to learn hands-only CPR.”

The AHA and other groups are trying to make CPR more accessible and they’re spreading the word through innovative methods, including things like basketball halftimes. The guidelines say it’s appropriate to start CPR if you see a person collapse who is not breathing or is gasping. The hands-only CPR is meant to be performed until an ambulance or EMS provider or someone with an automatic defibrillator arrives to take over.